In the Meantime aka Afterwards
by Elly Green
Summary: What happened after the cure was released and TX-14 gas was dropped and before the 10-year time gap and Clem's surprising revelation? I'm about to find out. This is going to be long... fair warning! [Part One: Chapters 1-15]
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.**

 _6 months after the Season 2 Finale, but WAY before the 10-year time jump..._

Jackson lifted the rifle, scanning the tall grasses on every side of him for the slightest movement. Luckily, the day was quiet, the wind absent, the heat driving most of the animals and insects into silence. He took another slow step forward, heel to ball, careful to avoid making any small sound, drawing any unwelcome attention his direction. He was alone out here. No backup.

Abe and Dariela had left the camp a week ago, right after the first wave of hybrids had hit the shores of South Africa. She was due in a few months time and considering the danger these new animals posed, they had made the wise decision to flee back to the states. At least there, military troops had begun to set up safe zones, seeing the writing in the sand after first South America, then Mexico had been overrun.

He wished them luck.

Jackson should have followed. Instead, he'd decided to stay. He had told Abe it was because he felt safest here, that Africa was his home, and he wouldn't leave his mother again. Abe had bought it. It wasn't the truth. Jackson, deep down, wanted to die. Well, that wasn't really true either. He just didn't want to live anymore. Now that everything was done, the animals were saved and the TX-14 gas dropped, his father's master plan revealed, and his friends scattered to the wind, the loss of Chloe hung with him. A promise stolen from him. A life and family never realized, but hoped for, just gone. And any chance of a family with another woman, also snatched, though that didn't bother him as much. He loved Chloe.

Suddenly, the rustle of tall weeds scratched, drawing his focus back to the present. Something was moving toward him. Something large. Something fast. He paused, frozen in place. Very fast. And definitely more than one. Bouncing to his toes, he looked as far across the plain as he could. In a wide vee spreading out from his location, the grass wasn't just shaking, it was bending, breaking.

"Shit," he yelled, startling some birds from a nearby tree into flight, as he flung himself to the ground. Rifle forgotten, he curled into a ball, hands wrapped over his neck.

The pack of lionesses streamed past him, giving him a berth, though he could still feel their soft hides brush the hair of his arm. Not a one stopped to consider him, sniff him or otherwise. It was a bad sign. Whatever was chasing them, was far more terrifying than he was. Or, rather, was far more terrifying than they were. As the final cat scampered away, he stood, retrieved his rifle, looked at the crumpled flora around him and then in the direction the lions had come.

The first howl startled him. He expected the others.

Sprinting toward the first tree he saw, he quickly climbed the branches as high up as he could, settling between two branches. He braced a leg against one, resting his elbow on his knee. Thanks to some intrepid giraffes, he had a clear view of the lower branches and ground. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and waited, willing his arms to hold out long enough. He had a camp to protect. Not much in the way of people, per se, but stock full of fond memories.

And he wasn't going to go down without a fight. Suicide was one thing, sacrificing yourself for the greater good was another. Mitch had been right, so many months ago, when he'd confronted Jackson about his repressed memories of his father. Chloe had died trying to save the world. Now, it was his turn. He was going to eliminate as much of the new threat as he could.

He let the lead hybrid enter the clearing without firing a shot. A second and third followed. Holding his breath, he waited. They moved cautiously, bumping hips and shoulders, giggling low, lolling tongues falling from open mouths as they nipped at one another, almost playfully. Just like hyenas, Jackson realized as he studied them, forgetting for the moment that he was supposed to kill as many as possible before getting killed himself.

The assumption had been made that these were wolf hybrids, but considering what he saw here, Jackson had some serious doubts. Since the only dead hybrids found - the living ones dragging off their perished companions - were basically random parts and not a single live one ever captured, all of the scientific "research" conducted on the new species was based on a lot of conjecture. And from his new perspective, those conjectures were wrong.

There had been a handful of questions raised by the government at the beginning, once Jackson, Jamie, Abe, and Dariela had spilled the beans about that secret island and the scientists who had worked and lived there. Most, surprisingly, had been focused on the hybrids. Especially, their design and creation. Though, at that time no one had predicted that the animals would escape and spread so rapidly around the world. The possibility of that had never been considered and now it was too late. Yet, watching as he did, this group of fifteen hybrids tracking and hunting their prey, Jackson had some ideas about how exactly these creatures had multiplied and overrun the planet in a few short months.

Hyenas were female-dominated, clans easily reaching upwards of fifty animals across swaths of Africa, however very fluid. Which meant that the clan members separated and rejoined at will, depending on resources. And, being female oriented, the number of young that survived was much higher than those mammals where females either raised their young alone or in a male-dominated hierarchy.

Jackson smirked at the thought. Explained the inexplicable population explosion they had seen on the island. And, the ferocity. Hyenas were incredibly territorial.

The group below him moved on after fully exploring the clearing. Though one had sniffed where he'd been crouched on the ground, even lifting her head to scent the dry air, he was surprised none of them had taken notice of him in the tree. With the heat baking down, he knew he had to smell.

It was curious and damn him, he needed some answers before finishing what he'd started. Perhaps it was the latent biologist in him. He scoffed at the thought. After seeing everything his father had done in the name of science, he had tried to distance himself as much as possible from the title. Abe, instead, moved by Mitch's final sacrifice, had enrolled at the local university, starting his first biology classes via spotty Internet connection three months ago.

Climbing down from the tree when the hybrids had moved off far enough to give him a chance, he shouldered his rifle and tracked after them.

Chloe would wait. She would understand, he told himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Following the pack of hybrids all afternoon, Jackson thought back again to the last time he and Chloe had been together. Alive. In love.

The taste of her lips. Her hand on his back, coming up to stroke his neck, his ear... The feel of her breath when she giggled at his scrambled response to Dariela.

He should have been the first to say he loved her. He had been working up the nerve for a few weeks and then she'd gone and said it first. At a formal party, for the NOAH Objective, that they had crashed, in order to steal an earthquake-causing sloth. It was a series of events he would have never predicted. Even after their equally strange meet and successive race to find a cure to the worldwide animal problem. Laughing alone, in the wilds of Africa while tracing the path of the world's first genetically-engineered hybrid, he suddenly understood while his old way of life just wasn't working out the way he'd hoped.

You could never go back.

It was a lesson he was slow to learn.

Up ahead he could hear the hybrids squealing and huffing among themselves. He slowed his pace, keeping his attention on the predators. Circling away from the track and into the deeper plain grass, he moved downwind - a slight wind finally picking up across the Serengeti marking the coming sunset - circling the group. He was glad to see another tree nearby. Scampering up it as quietly and quickly as possible, he took a seat on a high enough branch and observed what he could.

He was amazed. Dead lionesses, five of them, lay in the blood-soaked sand. Hybrids were gathered around three of the big cats, gorging themselves on the fresh kills. He winced at the sound of cracking bones. Despite living in Africa for most of his life, having witnessed nearly every dark continent predator feeding, that sound still always made him sick to his stomach.

Circle of life. Yeah, right.

Nearly falling from his perch at the sight, Jackson noticed that two of the five lions he'd thought were dead, weren't. The closest one to him took a shuddering breath, only to fall silent again. Her tongue was blue, extending grotesquely from her jaws, but her eyes were still moving. Pain radiated in the depths, the whites of her eyes red. Her ear flicked infinitesimally. He glanced at the other one the hybrids were ignoring, she too was alive, but barely.

Strange. That definitely wasn't hyena behavior.

Jackson itched to climb down, crawl closer, and get a better look. It was a death sentence. This morning, he would have acted without hesitation, but now he was invested. Though he had tried to leave science behind, it apparently wasn't done with him. He couldn't die without some answers. So he satisfied himself with noting what he could from where he was. Anything he could pass along to the Zoological Society of Southern Africa. Anything that might help control the spread of these monsters. To save his friends.

His final parting gift.

It must be a poison or venom, he thought, studying the lioness with the blue tongue. Each breath was labored. He imagined her wheezing. Asphyxiation would have caused death by now. A neurotoxin would have caused tremors, at least, and drooling. An embolism in the lungs could cause a bluish tongue, as well, but that seemed rather fortuitous. Sure, the hybrids could have caused the embolism, but he had no idea how, without more outward damage. Considering damage, he looked over the lionesses. Both had flesh wounds, deep scratches down their shoulders and hips. So that answered one question, it had to be a venom. Somehow, the hybrids injected a toxic substance into their prey.

But which one?

Considering what he knew of genetic engineering - which was admittedly sparse - and what he was observing of the hybrids, he decided the venom was probably from a mammalian species instead of insect, reptile, or sea creature… though, even that was a guess. A few of the behaviors he was noticing reminded him a lot of African bees. A scary thought.

Running through his memory of known venoms in the animal kingdom, he eliminated each one by one, having seen a significant number of affected animals and humans either in pictures or real-life, living as he was, in an area inhabited by some of the deadliest animals on the planet. The only continent more dangerous was Australia.

He tried desperately to recall those long past university lectures. Coming up with nothing except a rough idea of either the stonefish or the puffer fish - either one delivering their venom of choice via spikes or spines on the body - he shook his head in annoyance. Of course, he could only remember the sea creatures. He would have to look up more later, when he got back to the camp.

Yes, he was going back. For now.

The hybrids had finished feasting, their bellies swollen with meat, organs, and bones, and were milling about. A few rolled almost joyously in the spoils of the massacre, coating their fur with the smell of death and decay. That behavior, Jackson recognized. It spanned across the world. Predators and prey alike. In order to hide their natural scents from the rest of the animal kingdom.

A larger female, he noticed no male appendages and took an educated guess based on his hyena supposition, moved toward one of the motionless lionesses that had so far been left alone. He expected her to kill it then. To feed herself to the point of bursting. Or - he recalled the bodies of the Shepherds in the complex - to remove a threat to the clan. Instead, she gathered the loose skin on the lion's back in her strong jaws and began yanking it. Other hybrids approached, grabbing mouthfuls of the lion, but not breaking her skin, and helped. Soon, both hybrids and paralyzed lions were back on the move, in the direction the hybrids had first come.

Jackson watched, amazed and horrified. His own jaw hung limp in shock. His mind whirled over the implications of what he'd seen. Of what this might mean...

Could he have survived? Despite returning to the island for his body, despite searching the entire complex and surrounding hills and caves for two weeks, exploring every potential hiding place, none of them had found a single trace of Mitch except a pair of bloodied glasses.


	3. Chapter 3

Tracking the drag marks proved irresistibly easy. Until they just disappeared. He stood at the edge of the savannah, looking out across a plain of mostly sand and scrub brush.

Jackson couldn't believe it. He'd lost the trail.

He squatted to the ground, running his hand gently over a single pawprint beside the rough edge of the drag mark. Studying it closely, he noticed no difference between it and any of the previous prints. Nothing that he could see had changed. Where there should have been another print… Jackson scratched the nape of his neck. He was at a loss for words. He lifted his head and squinted forward again.

Where the hell had they all gone?

The hybrids and the poisoned lions were just gone. Missing. As though they'd never been here in the first place. Another unexplained behavior.

The sun was low on the horizon. Night was approaching fast. The drone of insects began wailing. From somewhere to his left, he heard a herd of water buffalo bellowing at one another as they crowded together for the long night. A lion's roar echoed over the valley. The eerily human sounding cries of leopards responded. Those were comforting sounds. Normalcy in an otherwise strange day.

He stood, scanning both the way he'd come and where he'd been headed. Still nothing. Jackson adjusted the rifle across his back and, after tightening his laces, started back toward the safari camp.

Ten paces and then he heard her. The moaning of a wounded animal. Something was panicking in the brush, kicking and tossing its body to the ground as it struggled to get up, to escape. Could have been a buffalo calf, an antelope, a warthog. But he knew it wasn't. Not today.

Jackson pushed through the tall grass, his steps hurried. All of a sudden, he saw her. One of the lionesses. She was alone. And she was waking up. She didn't look well, but she was alive. He laughed. She startled at the noise, freezing in her attempts to regain herself, and watched him approach warily. Edging as close as he dared, he circled her, his voice calm as he spoke to her, observing her state. She had a few deep wounds to her side, a bite mark across her rump, scratches from being dragged, yet otherwise unharmed.

She was a miracle. He still didn't know why she'd been left behind by the pack of hybrids, but it didn't matter, not now, not to him. She was alive.

He left her and returned to the safari camp. Jackson had a call to make.

* * *

Jamie collapsed to the side of the bed, her legs giving out under her exhaustion. She hadn't slept well in months. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him. Remembered him. He had broken her heart and she feared it would never heal.

She'd gotten Clem up and ready for school, fed, out the door, and on the school bus on time. It was a minor miracle. She was not ready to be a mother. Wasn't sure if she really wanted children and yet here she was, at the end of the world, mothering a pre-teen. An orphaned pre-teen whose mother and stepdad had been killed by crazed animals and her father killed by hybrids. All of them trying to save her.

Basically unknown to the girl, she had been all the child had left. They were connected by a man. A man neither knew very well or for very long. But a man both of them had loved.

Clem was a good kid, she had to admit. Despite the horrors of past two years, the girl had come out a stronger person. She was bouncing back, adjusting to the changes which had befallen their new world reality. Jamie was flat out sure she, herself, hadn't. If anything, she'd regressed to her own teenage years. She was sullen, moody, and unmotivated.

Her life sucked. Once again, when everything had finally seemed to be looking up, when her future had stretched before her full of happiness and love, it had all come crashing down. Death had stolen her future away. First her mother, then her friend, now... She couldn't bring herself to say his name, not even in her head. The pain was still too fresh.

Life wasn't fair.

Stripping the sweater off, she tugged her camisole down over her hips and fell sideways onto her pillow. She glanced at the clock. 10:19. Maybe she could get another hour's sleep before she had to do the laundry and go grocery shopping. She'd promised to make Clem a chocolate cake tonight for the girl's twelfth birthday. No friends over, though. With the new curfew rules in effect, she'd have to wait until the weekend before they could have a party.

Her eyes slipped from the clock to the pair of glasses that sat perched on the dresser beside a picture. It was all they had left of him, a shrine her and Clem had made. Somedays it made her sick to look at it, other days, like today, she felt comforted. Hugging her arms around her, she let the tears which were always ready, fall.

The phone scared her. She hiccuped on a startled breath and reached for it. She was surprised by the name that flashed up on the screen. She quickly answered. Rolling to her back, she sat up a bit higher on the pillow, wiping at her wet cheeks.

"Hey, Jackson."

"Jamie?"

"Who did you think you were calling?" she teased, though she knew her voice sounded weird. She hoped he didn't notice. She had cried with him enough over their shared losses. He had moved on, she hadn't. She was embarrassed.

He chuckled. "Wasn't sure I'd get through. The satellites aren't what they used to be. Botswana is pretty far away these days."

She laughed at him, clearing the grief from her voice. "What time is it there?"

"About seven."

"How are Abe and Dariela?" She often wondered how they were handling the pregnancy. Dariela, especially. She'd grown to respect the Army Ranger despite the rough foot they'd gotten off on. And in some small way, she wanted another "mother" to talk to about things. A woman who had been through what they'd been through and still come out of it a good enough role model.

He hesitated. "They've returned to the States."

She wanted to ask where to or why he'd stayed behind, but the tone of Jackson's voice worried her. There was something else there, something he didn't want to share.

"Look, Jamie, I called because I think… I was hunting hybrids this afternoon… wasn't sure…" She pulled the phone from her ear and studied it, and Jackson on the other end of it, curiously. Was it static that caused this confusion or him? "The lionesses weren't all dead… saved them… poision."

"What?" She'd had enough. "Jackson, I don't understand."

"We never found his body. They didn't kill him." She dropped the phone on the bed covers. Her hands were trembling. He continued, unaware her heart had stopped. "There is a chance he's still alive."

"Jackson, stop!" She was shaking all over, choking on the waterfall of tears.

"Jamie, he could still be alive!" A burst of static erupted over the line, angry at his volume.

"No. No! He isn't. He's gone. We searched-" Her voice was low, she was speaking more to herself than to him.

"It was a week later."

Jamie glanced down at the phone. She reached for it. "You have to stop, Jackson. I moved on-" It was a lie. She knew it. He knew it. She wanted to believe it.

"You're the only one, Jamie. I need your help. We can find-"

She hung up on him, pressing her thumb down on the side of the cell phone with anger. Sitting up against the headboard, Jamie wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth. He was delusional…

Hope was a dangerous thing, though. His words played over and over in her head. There was a chance Mitch was alive.

Dialing Jackson's number, praying he picked up, praying he didn't, she growled when he answered. "You better be right."


	4. Chapter 4

An hour and a half later, Jackson had relayed nearly everything he had witnessed while stalking the pack of hybrids throughout the afternoon and evening. It was a long story. Jamie looked down at the papers scattered across the small Formica table her and Clem ate their meals at. She had scribbled down shorthand notes every which way across them.

The midday sun streamed through the lone window overlooking the kitchen sink. Her back was sore, hunched as she was over the table, papers, and phone. Straightening, she frowned at what she'd just written. There was a gap to his story, a gap in the logic of the theory he was proposing. She dropped her pencil.

"Jackson, look, even if this poison had been used on him, even if he hadn't been killed immediately like all the Shepherds, they must have dragged him off somewhere." She paused, taking a deep breath. She was playing devil's advocate to his idea, as he'd asked her to do, but it was killing her inside to consider the worse after being given so much hope. "Where he was then killed. Why would they have just left him somewhere so he could escape? Doesn't make sense."

"Not necessarily. Remember the lioness I had found left out in the open? The pack had disappeared and abandoned her. She wasn't killed."

Though he couldn't see her through the phone, she nodded. She remembered. "Doesn't mean they didn't come back later." She said it almost stubbornly.

"True. Right." He cleared his throat with a small cough. "That's a good point. I'll have to go back out in the morning and track her to make sure. "

At that promise, both of them lapsed into silence. She had one more question. A question he had neglected to answer yet.

Taking a loud, pained deep breath, she finally asked it. She had to know. "Jackson, I'm not a biologist. I don't know anything about zoology, biochemistry, or animal pathology. That was Mitch." She hurried over his name, her voice breaking as she said it. "Why did you call me?" Jamie shook her head at the idiocy of his choice. "Why not call Abe?" She knew about the classes he'd begun to take. She was proud of him, approving of his way to honor his friend. "Why me?"

Jackson chuckled in response. It shocked her, angered her. Bristling for a fight, she took slow, steadying breaths. She didn't think the question warranted amusement. She was serious. But then he sobered almost immediately. Thankfully. "You spent an entire year with the man, Jamie. That first year, every chance you got, you were right with him. He talked to you and you listened. You asked questions. Everyone noticed."

"You spent an entire year with the man, Jamie. That first year, every chance you got, you were right with him. He talked to you and you listened. You asked questions. Everyone noticed."

She grunted in hesitant acknowledgment. Way to point out her infatuation, Jackson?

"And then, even after your rescue, even when you and he were -" He wisely stopped, skipping whatever it was that they were and were doing. "You two still talked science. He confided in you."

"Okay?"

"I think you know more than you think you do. In fact, I'm betting you do." He suddenly paused to yawn. She glanced at the clock, adding up the nine hours to his time. It had to be half past nine. No wonder he was tired after the day he'd had. "Besides, you're a journalist. You tracked and traced Reiden's influence across the globe for years. You must have run across thousands of scientific articles during that chase."

"You finished yet?" she teased, her composure once again relaxed. He was right. She hadn't thought about it that way. Perhaps she did know more than she realized. It was strange, but he always seemed to know what to say to make her feel better, like everything was going to be okay after all.

"I know Mitch is still alive, Jamie. I can't get to him alone. I need someone to do the research I can't. Someone to ask the hard questions. You have the greatest stake in this. If anyone can find him, you will."

Staring over the notes again, she studied them. It was a theory, that was all. A wild, crazy theory. She smiled despite the fear of failure hanging over her head. "In theory."

He laughed again and this time she joined in.

* * *

He had made her promise not to tell Abe or Dariela. She had agreed, with conditions. Conditions he had not agreed to, but he wasn't about to tell her. And Clem? He knew Jamie wasn't stupid enough to tell his daughter and give her hope without her father there, waiting behind a door to surprise her. That child had been through enough already. If his father had taught him one thing, the fewer people involved in something, the less chance it went south.

Something else was going on. Something big, something terrifying. If Mitch were still alive, as he believed, then why hadn't he reached out in the last six months? Contacted them. Found them.

Jackson had seen their love, had seen the way the older man had watched Jamie, protected her, stood as close to her every chance he got, touched her whenever she'd let him. A man that much in love wouldn't let anything get between him and his love unless it would put his love in danger.

Wherever Mitch was and whatever he was doing, it was dangerous. For him and for her. Jackson just hoped it wasn't where he thought it was, and wasn't what he dreaded. The last time someone close to him had come back from the dead… Well…

He prayed he was wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

He woke early the next morning. It was still dark, only the sliver of a glow on the horizon. Jamie was right. He had no idea what had happened with the lioness. Looking back to yesterday, he wondered if he'd been too hasty in contacting Jamie with his theory. Hoping he wasn't proven wrong today, he set out at dawn, a tracker in his backpack along with water and food. He carried a rifle on one shoulder, a tranq gun on the other.

Having no trouble tracking his steps back to where he'd left the lioness last evening, he bent to one knee and studied the surrounding ground. He noted his boot prints and the lioness's paw prints as she'd gotten to her feet and wobbled off to the east. He would follow her in a moment.

Right now, he was looking for any traces of the hybrids who had mysteriously disappeared. Despite spending half the night trying to piece together what he had observed and what made sense, he'd gotten nowhere. He couldn't think of any reasonable way to explain the whole pack's disappearance. He was going to have to consider the unreasonable.

Snickering to himself, he nodded absently, giving into fantasy. The beasts had sprouted wings and flown to safety.

The sooner he found that lioness and checked her over, the sooner he could gather more evidence and get answers. Pegasus-hybrids, notwithstanding.

Shifting back to his feet, he slipped the tranq gun into his arms and followed the path of the lioness. It wasn't too difficult. He knew where the local prides liked to spend their nights. Since it was still early, they were probably still there. In another few hours, the females would be up and on the hunt. He doubted the injured one would be ready to join in, but he moved quickly just in case.

As expected, he was right. Three lions, probably brothers, were still stretched out on the stones, looking for all the world like hairy housecats. Snoring, flopped haphazardly on their sides, tails twitching in the air, they didn't look remotely like kings. Of the jungle or otherwise. The handful of lionesses - those who weren't part of yesterday's hunting party - meanwhile were sitting in the grass and draped in the tree branches, eyes open, heads swiveling, alert and ready to react in case of danger. From his hiding place behind another grouping of boulders, he retrieved his binoculars and studied each lioness in turn. One, obviously a mother, was watching a trio of cubs pounce and roll on top of each other in front of her. Another one, heavily pregnant, her belly swollen and ready to burst, lay nearby. She looked sick, her eyes glassy. He understood. Sometimes, pregnancy sucked. He scanned over the others. Two juvenile females sat hip to hip, staring in opposite directions. Another, older female, was in the tree. Despite her role as lookout, he noticed her eyes kept drifting closed and her lids hung heavily over them, even when alert. None looked like his lioness.

Getting worried, he removed the binoculars from his eyes and stood up a little higher over the edge of the rocks. He squinted into the distance, studying the pride again. He had followed her here. Where the hell was she?

And then he saw her. She was on the other side of the mother with cubs. Rounding the boulders where the lions slept, she padded into the clearing. Jackson blinked. She was a beautiful tawny color, sleek, taller than usual, and heavily muscled. She was a force of nature. Bringing the binoculars back up, he studied her as she moved across his view. He noted the wounds from the previous day, but where they had been ugly, red, and raw, they were now almost healed, scabbed over, edged with healthy pink skin.

How was that even possible? He had never seen an animal heal so quickly. Even from a minor flesh wound, let alone a deep scratch.

She walked over to the two young lionesses and with a paw, smacked one upside the head, before pouncing on and rolling the other over to her side and pinning her playfully to the ground. Like cubs, he realized. Though, these were grown up past the age where that kind of play would be expected and tolerated. He waited, barely breathing, for one of the two to snap at his lioness. Nothing. They didn't seem to sense anything wrong with her behavior.

Jackson frowned. He dropped the binoculars and turned to rest his back against the bottom of the rocks.

Well, she was alive. She was healthy. Jamie would be happy to hear it.

He wasn't going to mention the rest of the strangeness. Not until he knew more.

Balancing the tranq gun, he stole a quick breath, eased around the boulders and crawled west, keeping downwind of the pride. He approached within a few yards of them, the air heavy with their musk, and spread the weedy stems away from the tip of his rifle. With practiced ease, Jackson aimed and fired. The lioness squealed, drawing the attention of the rest of her pride, took a few steps away, then fell down. On high alert, the pride stood and surveyed their surroundings. The old female climbed down from the tree, sniffed her companion, then huffed and growled, pushing against the males, calling the rest of them away. It was no longer safe.

Rolling to his back, he counted to five hundred before crawling toward the fallen lioness. Digging the tracker from his pack, he slipped it onto the lioness's ear, wiping the bit of blood away from her ear and running his hand softly over her head between her ears.

* * *

The heavy, hot sun was midway to half-point and still Jackson hadn't a clue where the hybrids were. He had moved off into the sandy savannah in as straight a line as he could manage from the last two prints and the final edge of the drag mark. It seemed every other animal had traipsed this way, except the ones he was hunting. He stood currently, staring down at the unmistakable prints of a herd of zebra, interspersed with what appeared to be five giraffes. Oh, and not to be left out, three wild dogs. All of which were headed in the same direction. Away from the closest body of water.

It was odd. Yet more questions needing answers.

He debated his options. Shrugging, he took a reading from his GPS and turned in the opposite direction of the animal prints, heading toward where the local watering hole had been the lifespring of this whole area for the last decade.

The sun's heat was beating down on his shoulders by the time he reached what should have been the edge of the watering hole. But, where water should have been, was a cracked and cratered plain. A handful of desiccated fish and amphibians lay scattered throughout. How was it the tiny lake had dried up overnight? The rainy season had just ended, storms still coming, but fewer and fewer each week. There was no shortage of water. Or, rather, there shouldn't be. Not yet. And definitely not here. This body of water was fed by an underground fissure, having only dried up once for two weeks twelve years ago. The safari camp had been located here because of that fact. The watering hole guaranteed abundant animal life.

Turning in a circle, he studied the surrounding landscape. Just like last evening, he saw no signs of the hybrids, but unlike last evening, he did notice differences in the land. Where the tall grass sprouted high and a drab green, it was now yellow-brown, dead, bent over - not from the passage of an animal - but from environmental stress. Radiating out from the dried lake as far as he could see in the blazing sunlight, he noticed the land slowly dying.

He covered his eyes with his hand, shrinking down to sit in the dry bed.

Had the hybrids caused this? And if so, how? If it was spreading, he needed to find out fast. The creatures had invaded every continent. A sickening tightness in his gut wondered if the answer lay with Mitch's survival. What were the odds if he found one answer, he'd find the other?


	6. Chapter 6

Five days of searching the savannah for signs of the hybrids and Jackson was ready to give up. He had never encountered an animal so difficult, so perplexing to track.

Meanwhile, in between his mile long hikes out from ever expanding search points, he would check the watering hole. The death of life had spread out about ten miles, then abruptly stopped. Everything was green and alive again, as though nothing had happened. Except, something had. Though the plant life was thriving, the lack of local water was driving the fauna away. Herds which had been mainstays for years had already left. Predators were following. He'd tracked the lioness last night. She was already thirty miles out.

Two nights ago, the rains had come, and he'd had hope. Most of the water that fell had leeched back into the earth, meaning the underground cavern was as empty as the lake above, which explained the circle of death, but enough had remained above ground to create a treacherous mud pit. The next morning, a dead and scavenged warthog had met his eyes.

It was on the sixth day of his search - when he had decided one more day, then he was moving on - that he finally discovered a trace of the hybrids. After falling in a depression, more a trough than a hole, while staring at his GPS, he'd landed hard on his hands, spraining a wrist. While sitting, cradling the wrist and testing his mobility, he had looked down and noticed the tusk-like spine in the dirt. It was caked with yellow-green dried pus and almost black blood. Picking it up, thinking it was a tusk, he had flipped it over and noticed the hollow nature. It was also oddly shaped, more narrow and only slightly curved. Brushing at the debris stuck to it, his fingers had begun to tingle. Rough edges abraded his skin, opening tiny wounds for the venom to seep within. It wasn't much, but it was enough. His vision blurred and lungs ached. Muscles in his arms weakened, his joints heavy as if with lead.

Jackson had spent the night curled in the fetal position, trying his best to stay alive. He kept replaying the image of the lioness, hale and hearty the next day, in his head as a mantra. He would survive. He was certain what he'd thought was a tusk, was, in fact, one of the spines that lined the back of a hybrid. And now he had felt first hand the venom's power and effect.

The next morning, Jackson woke with the sun, feeling better, though not as good as the lioness had seemed. His body still ached. His skin hurt with any sort of contact, his eyes watered constantly. But, oddly enough, his wrist had almost healed. Where swelling was expected, there was only tenderness.

Standing, he ripped a large leaf off the closest tree and wrapped the hybrid spine carefully, tucking it in his bag. He would be safer with it from now on. Then, examining the depression he'd tripped over in the first place, he noticed the overhang of an impressively long slab of bedrock and the gap between it and the ground beneath. Like a curbside sewer opening, from the right angle, the gap was noticeable, from the wrong angle, nothing appeared out of place.

Squatting to his hands and knees, he peered under the edge of rock and into the large cavern which opened beneath it. He needed light. Jackson yanked the backpack from his shoulder and retrieved his solar-powered lantern. Switching it on, he tossed it into the pit. What flared to life before him made him whoop in triumph. Finally!

* * *

Jamie looked over the kitchen as she shut the door to the apartment. Clem was on the bus, the poster board project due today in hand, despite the long night. The kitchen, however, was an absolute mess. She sighed. Instead of cleaning anything up - it might be easier to burn the apartment down and start fresh - she stole her laptop off the bookcase, unplugging its charger, and sat cross-legged on the couch, propping the computer on her lap.

She pulled up her notes, minimizing the tab, then signed on to her Internet account. She'd spent the last couple days researching anything and everything she could about poisonous and venomous animals the world over. She couldn't believe what she'd learned. Or, that she had wanted to save these animals from death a few scant months ago. They were literally death themselves. Walking killers.

Eyeing the spider on the current page, she remembered the afternoon the rest of the group had gone looking to get a jellyfish while she and Logan had gotten "interviewed" by Allison, and instead been coerced into catching a bunch of these. Maybe she wasn't so angry she'd had to stay behind. Knowing what she knew now, she was terrified for them.

Jackson had asked her to see if she could come up with any venoms that maimed, but didn't kill its prey. She had taken copious notes on the symptoms he had described, trying to match up as many as she could with any one animal. So far, she had a list of five possibilities. One stood out the most to her. She had underscored it on her notes - with an additional note to relay it to Jackson next time he called. It was the best she could do for now.

The second part of her search focused on the Shepherds. Who they were and what they were up to. When the group had returned and been confronted by the government regarding the cure, the NOAH Objective, and surprisingly - the death of General Davies - they had all been briefed. No one had known much about the Shepherds. At the time, she hadn't noticed the lack of questions surrounding them - she was too distraught to care - but a month later when Reiden, IADG, and company had claimed the victory for the animals she wondered why no one had asked more about the secretive group.

Today she would find out.

She began by typing in anything she could think of in any combination to hit the right kind of search. Nothing worked. However, lots of pictures of cute dogs did pop up. Jamie looked up and eyed Henry in the corner. He was watching her quietly. His tail thumped on the carpeted floor when she made eye contact. She smiled at him and he lifted his head to grin back at her. Since the meds had worked, Clem hadn't needed him with her at school anymore. Henry was finally learning to relax when his girl was out of his sight. It was endearing. Jamie hadn't had a pet since she went off to college.

Getting frustrated, she typed in another set of terms. Random terms she hadn't expected to work and didn't make much sense to her. The first link startled her. Could it really be that simple? She wrote down the title of the page on a piece of scrap paper. Then, she wrote down the first letters of each word.

Oh, hell.

The Society for the Historical Preservation of Animal Research and Development. SHPARD. Jamie stood, placing the laptop beside her on the couch, and reaching for the cookie jar sitting on top of the TV, she grabbed a handful of treats and tossed them to Henry. It was time for a celebration!


	7. Chapter 7

Mitch woke screaming. His throat was raw with fear. His eyes were crusty and dry. He wiped at them, digging his knuckles into the corners of his eye sockets. His ears throbbed with the echo of his dying shout.

The hybrids had been after him. He had been running in the jungle, slipping on the wet ground as he struggled to escape them. Jamie held his hand. He pulled her along behind him, urging her faster and faster. They were gaining on them. The sounds of their jaws snapping in anticipation pushed him harder. Jamie screamed, falling, her hand ripped from his. He swung around to grab her, to save her, only she was no longer there. Logan stood over her dead body. He was howling at the moon, blood smeared across his lower face, his nails dripping with her blood. He leaped to attack, to kill the bastard, only to be knocked back by a hybrid. He felt the moment its teeth pierced his calf. The second its claws raked down his back, exposing his spine.

Staring at the blank wall opposite his cot of a bed, he tried to remember where he was. It came back to him slowly and he groaned as his new reality fell back around him. Reaching behind him, he eased a hand under his shirt and traced over the faint scars. He grimaced. If only they'd allow him a drink, then he might one day forget.

He shook off the despair. It was the same, day after day. About a thousand feet through that wall, stood another wall, the outer edge of the Svalbard "Doomsday" Global Seed Vault. Above him, a landscape of rock and ice. The furthest edge of the civilized world, the forgotten corner of Norway. He'd identified as such, in the hurried walk from the helicopter to the double steel doors of the facility. The Shepherds had transferred him to this desolate underground warren of labs before he'd recovered from the hybrid attack. When he was still in pain and malleable. Before he knew what they had planned for him

Like the Shepherds, their friends the Farmers, had been collecting and experimenting with both modern and extinct plant-life and hybrids, the future, of the world's flora. It was fortuitous they had located their own hidden research station within an easy walk of the Seed Vault. However, where that center was a visible, open, government-run facility, the one where he now resided was hidden, secret, and run by madmen.

He rolled to his back, draping an arm over his eyes. He didn't want to see what hung above him on the wall next to his cot. Rotating pictures of Clementine, Jackson, Chloe, Abe, Dariela, and Jamie flickered in the tiny space. They were using the images - those smiling, happy faces of the people who had come to matter the most to him - to break him. And, much to his chagrin, it was working. General Davies had been right, he was a coward. He couldn't stand to look at them anymore. He already cried himself to sleep every night.

They were all dead. He'd been shown the pictures, handed over the bloody proof he'd required, and explained how his sacrifice had, in the end, been for naught. The plane had landed in Maine, they'd found Clementine, saved her, then been attacked. The entire safe zone had been overrun. His daughter and friends had walked into a trap. The cure had worked, the birds had spread it as promised to every corner of the planet. Just not fast enough.

He had failed.

And as to the NOAH Objective and the gas dropped over the planet, the Shepherds had explained the real use of the gas. It had been Dr. Oz after all. His master plan. He had worked against the plans of Davies and the world governments to alter the gas. Instead of targeting the animals, it had targeted humankind. It had wiped out the deadliest of the world's diseases. His cure had saved the animals and theirs had saved humankind. The world was once again in balance.

Except there was now a new danger. Hybrids roamed the planet. Unlike the animals affected by Reiden, who had seemingly banded together to destroy humankind, these hybrids went after both animals and humans. Nothing was sacred to them. They had but one goal, total annihilation of the world's Animalia, humans included.

No one knew exactly how they had escaped the island compound, but the general consensus - whispered under the breath whenever he was around - was that someone had left the gate open.

Once again, he had failed. He had saved the animals only to doom the planet.

Climbing to his feet, keeping his back towards the pictures, he retrieved his glasses from the bedside table. He buffed them on the cuff of his flannel and shoved them into place. Blinking through a few smears, he shuffled into his attached lab. There was no need to shave or change clothes. No one ever came down to see him. He'd been given his project. His final chance at redemption. When he succeeded, he'd be contacted. The computers were all monitored. He had no more secrets. He was no more to his saviors than a brain. A replacement for the loss of Dr. Robert Oz.

He laughed ruefully. He sure hoped Dr. Oz had been treated this poorly. The man deserved it for the crap he put his family through. Then, again… Mitch sobered. Had he done any better?

As the door slipped closed, he glanced back over his shoulder. He knew he shouldn't. Knew what the images would do to him. Still, he looked. Jamie smiled back at him, her blue eyes striking. Her red hair was down, caught in motion, tickling her face. Her hand was raised, half-waving.

Mitch cursed and sunk to the floor. He was crying again.


	8. Chapter 8

Holding his injured wrist tight against his chest, taking care not to re-injure what was already healing, Jackson crawled forward twisting his body and shimmying his shoulders to fit between the hard-packed earth and the sharp-edged bedrock. Below him, it was silent except for the welcoming drip of a water drop from a hanging stalactite to the echoing stalagmite. Considering what he had seen illuminated with the lantern, he kept stopping to check it stayed so.

In the deep cavern, another lake sat, as dried up as the watering hole. It connected to another lake, then another, each pool as dry as the first. Startling pale white creatures had long since ceased wiggling and were now scattered about dead, already decomposing in the dampness that still clung to the upper walls of the cavern.

But this discovery, as amazing as it was, was not what drew Jackson to risk entering the underground cavern without any idea how he was going to get back out. Among the debris of dead, edging what used to be the lake, were thousands of larger animal bones. He recognized at least two elephant skulls, a rhinoceros skull, and what could only be the leg bones of a giraffe. He had no idea how the bones had got down here, especially if they were still mainly attached to the animals at the time - since he himself was having trouble getting in here from the one entrance he'd found - but figured there was probably another entrance somewhere.

The bones spoke of a lair. And the only animals currently vicious enough to take down such massive animals and then drag the carcasses away in Africa, were the hybrids. He'd found the hybrids' lair. Their den. Which only solidified in his mind their hyena nature. Sure, wolves also created dens, but where they dug their own, hyenas were known scavengers of not only their food sources but also their living conditions. In East Africa, hyena clans had been found holed up in extensive underground caving systems. Opportunistic bastards.

Jackson chuckled. Squirming just a bit more, he finally fell free of the opening and slid feet first down the craggy wall. It wasn't a soft landing, but at least he didn't break a leg or a knee. Maybe a few more bruises on his back and hips. Otherwise, he was fine.

He stood and waited, listening. Nothing except the interminable water dripping. He prayed the hybrids were out hunting and feasting on their kills. It would give him enough time to search the area for more information on the creatures without the risk of becoming their dinner.

He moved first to the collection of bones. He walked among them, careful not to disturb them, studying and cataloging as many of the remains as he was able. The African fauna was well-known to him, including their bones. He hadn't been much help to Mitch on the plane with the triple helix animals - and not only because he'd been fighting against the beast inside. It had been too long since his college days.

He crisscrossed the cavern's previous lake in his search. A lake which must have been quite large and rather recently present, since the bones were scattered at the very edges of the cavern, on slightly upraised rock and soil - the shoreline, as it had been. There were no bones in the lake bed.

Having completed his walk through the bone yard, Jackson squatted at the lake's edge and stared across it. He imagined the water. The reflection of the stalactites off the ceiling. Ripples echoing out from drips and small cave dwellers. The water would be fresh, mineralized from the surrounding rocks. It would be cool down here, the air moist, still. He tilted his head at the thought that struck him.

Then why was he so damn hot?

He was sweating profusely, rivulets of sweat slipping down his back and legs. This deep underground, he should have been significantly cooler than he'd been up on the savannah. It was strange.

He sniffed the air. Sulphur? The smell of rotten meat, of decomposing flesh, had a very unique odor. What he smelled now, faint though it was, was not the scent he was expecting. It was the odor of rotten eggs. He glanced around him at the remains of days, if not months, of carnage. No broken shells. No eggs. Where was the Sulphur coming from? Yet more strangeness.

* * *

Mitch stared at the image of the extinct Hyaenodon on the computer in front of him. It hadn't been just the Saber-tooth cats the Shepherds had been experimenting with. They had tried to recreate an entire zoo of prehistoric mammalia. However, this time - he tapped a finger on the screen, in though - something had gone terribly wrong.

He pulled up a journal in a second pane, aligning it beside the image on the screen. It was Dr. Oz's. Most of his writings were nothing more than the rambles of a mind losing control, except this section. Beginning a little over two years ago, right after the animals had started going crazy, he was looking into a delivery system. A way to spread the cure. Mitch shook his head as he read. The man had known there would need to be a cure. Had seen this eventuality. Had realized the imminent issue of spreading the cure worldwide, quickly, and through a hostile animal kingdom.

It had been his idea to use the Hyaenodon DNA to create a new species, one capable of delivering a cure. One he could engineer. Only, well… No one ever got everything right the first time. Especially not when attempting cloning. Never when playing God with extinct animals. And definitely, beyond a doubt, not when trying to create something new.

It was a mistake. Now it was loose.

Shoving the rolling chair back violently, he struggled to his feet and swiping his glasses off and to the desk, he ran this hands through his unruly hair and scratched at his beard. He mumbled as he paced the room.

He needed to fine-tune the problem, identify the cause by looking at the effect. Once he did, he could create a cure, a solution to the problem and save the world. Again. Perhaps this time for real. Maybe, just maybe, he could talk them into releasing him then. He doubted it, but hope was an evil thing. He clung to it.

Collapsing back into the chair, he rolled over to his lab bench. He picked up a Petrie dish. A salt-like substance filled the dish. He licked his finger and touched it to a particle. Lifting the single bit to the lights above him, he studied it. It appeared to be a smudged prism, all sharp angles and low refracting. He touched his tongue to his finger, tasting the particle.

Salty.

Glancing back down to the scrawled Post-It on the bench, he re-read yesterday's note.

Epsom Salt? In urine?

It made no more sense today than it had yesterday.


	9. Chapter 9

Jamie eased out the door and with one more look back at the sleeping girl, pulled the door shut until it clicked. She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall at the end of the short hallway. It was past one in the morning. She had seen Clem adjusting to her new life, her new world, her new home, her new family. She had hoped the nightmares had disappeared with the changes and the girl's confident resiliency. Apparently, they hadn't. At least not all of them. Poor Clem had woken a half hour ago screaming for her mother and father.

Jamie knew she was a sad substitute for them. It had been Henry instead - the only one who had been through it all with her and was still here - that helped her relax enough to go back to sleep. Henry who had bridged the gap between them. No matter how hard Jamie tried, she wasn't the girl's family. Not really. Maybe one day… but that dream had been snatched heartlessly from her by the Shepherds.

Leaning against the wall opposite the bedroom, she dropped her forehead to her knees and let the tears that had been threatening all night finally fall. Every day she looked at Clem, she saw him. In the way she smiled, laughed, her snarky smirk, her quirky sense of humor, her stubbornness. It was Mitch. Despite having spent the better part of their lives apart, the girl took after her father. Collapsing onto her butt, Jamie chuckled among the tears. They even swirled their straws the same. Ate food in the same order. It was creepy how similar they were.

She allowed herself another five minutes of crying before she wiped the cuff of her sleeve across her eyes and cheeks and shook herself back to the present. Perhaps she and Clem just needed more time. Another few months… Then again, Allison hadn't really moved past Mitch either and that had been years.

"Crap," she cursed, shoving to her feet. They were both screwed.

Jamie crossed to her own room. But instead of crawling under the sheets and trying to get some shut-eye - exhaustion her only ally in the fight to fall unconscious - she grabbed her laptop and flopped cross-legged onto the quilt and propped her pillow on her lap, setting her computer on top. She opened the screen and pressed the power button. It woke up, the network loading, a blank white screen flaring to color, that irritating little cursor blinking under the most recent iteration of Google's logo.

"So…" she droned, tapping her ring finger on the letter 'o' and humming. Where to start this time?

She typed in the last thing she'd found the afternoon before. The Society for the Historical Preservation of Animal Research and Development. SHPARD. The search engine pulled up a half dozen sites, all linked to the main page of the society. That was it. No more. It was same as last time. Still, it was more than she'd known before. She clicked on the main page link. The verdant green, vibrant blue, and sunshiney yellow hued page was simple and refined. It was elegant, but down to earth. Images of free-roaming, healthy, happy, wildlife - mainly jungle life - scrolled across the welcome. A handful of links greeted her roaming cursor. None even remotely suggested the society was anything more than an animal interest group. In fact, she got the feeling the page was supposed to suggest something more like an anti-PETA agency.

Basically, they were selling the idea that animal research was good for the world - including the animals. Jamie snorted. Wasn't too far off the truth, now that she thought about it.

Clicking through the few links, she looked for something else. Anything else. Something for her to latch onto and investigate. Nothing. The page was bland, pretty looking and pretty words, but bland. Jamie pressed back to the original search engine page. She needed to try a new search.

Typing in 'Pangaea' and 'secret island', she scrolled through three pages of search results. Most dealt with the ancient land mass or supercontinent. A few dealt with conspiracy theories about Atlantis, a master race of aliens, or the spread of human intelligence. Although interesting in their own rights, she had been hoping for a theory more in line with prehistoric animals and dinosaurs popping up in and around South America. She rolled her eyes. If it was that easy to find the secret Shepherds, surely the government would have acted.

She groaned. Dead end after dead end. Returning to Google's search site, she tried another series of words: 'Saber-tooth cat' and 'sightings.' A ton more sites popped up. She scanned the list. Nothing jumped out at her, so she clicked on the 'Images' tab. Instantly, thousands of images appeared. Most were obvious fakes, a few paintings, some digital drawings. But what caught her attention was the fourth image across the page. It wasn't a saber-tooth cat at all. It was one of the hybrids. Grainy and blurred, a tiny blip in a much larger image, but she recognized the creature immediately. It was standing on the edge of a beach, shaded in the overgrowth of jungle foliage. Beyond it lay a gray cliff. The picture was taken from the air.

Jamie chose the image and waited as her network connected her to the original website. It was the personal page of a helicopter pilot. Huh? She began scrolling and clicking her way through his posted information. Nothing had been posted new for at least six months. Not one to believe in coincidences, she moved on to his business.

Three partners - he was one - rented both helicopters and single-prop planes, and piloted private charters up and down the west coast of South America and the Galapagos islands. Two of the partners seemed to still be active, posting selfies of themselves regularly. The third partner seemingly had gone missing. There were updates posted on the search. But, in the last month, everyone had given up. His wife's touching eulogy was linked to the homepage. Jamie read the first paragraph before she began crying again, then closed the page.

She needed to think. A thought was clinging to the back of her skull and she couldn't quite grasp it, yet she had a gut feeling it was incredibly important. Closing her laptop, she shoved it to the other side of her bed and curled up, hugging her pillow between her chest and knees. Sleep came quickly. Exhaustion finally won out.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** _Sorry for the short chapter, but before moving on to the next scene/chapter I had planned, I felt we all needed a little bit more of Jamie, Mitch, and Clem. So here it is. A little half-sized chapter to make us all smile!_

She woke to the shriek of the alarm beside her bed. The sun was up, its early morning brilliance shining through the curtains, and instantly panic set in. Her heart leapt into her throat. They were late. Tossing the quilt off of her, she dropped her feet to the floor and took off running across the room. As she ripped the bedroom door open, throwing it back to bounce off the wall with a crunch, she remembered it was Saturday.

Clem stood in the kitchen opposite her bedroom, a bowl of cereal in one hand, the other holding an almost empty gallon of milk. On the counter sat the container of chocolate syrup. Her red-rimmed eyes lit up at the sight of Jamie stumbling from the room. Her cheeks were blotchy, but her lips were stretched in a smile.

"You want breakfast?" the girl teased, rounding the kitchen column and taking a seat on one of the two bar stools at the breakfast bar.

Jamie was panting. She nodded at the offer, huffing out a "please" before joining the girl on the other stool. Clem climbed to her knees on the seat, reached back into the kitchen to snag a bowl and spoon from beside the sink and the cereal box from the counter. She handed each item over, then maneuvered back into her spot, tangling her long limbs around the legs of the stool. Laughing through the bites, Clem glanced at Jamie from the corner of her eye.

"Thank you for last night," she finally said after a few minutes.

Jamie nodded at the girl. "You are welcome, though I didn't do much. You should be thanking Henry."

"I already did. He got some cereal and milk, too." Clem winked.

Jamie chuckled. "That dog is spoiled."

"Yup." Lapsing back into silence, the two ate. Clem refilled her bowl when she was done. Jamie noticed her drown her cereal in chocolate sauce before adding a few splashes of milk to the mix. A girl after her own heart. She paused, her bite half chewed, swallowing hard. Is this what life would have been like if Mitch had survived? If they had made a life together? Had children? A daughter? Choking on both emotion and her breakfast, she gulped for air.

"You were here. You know that, right? I know you're not my parents. But they aren't here anymore and you are. We're family. I'm your daughter and you are my mom now." Clem spoke Jamie's thoughts. Her words were rushed as though she wasn't sure she should say anything at all. Jamie's heart stopped beating. This morning was either going to give her a stroke or flat out kill her. Her heart was already broken. "So, whether or not you think you're any help. You are. A lot."

Jamie didn't know what to say. She dropped her eyes to the floor. Closing them, she tried to remember how to breathe.

"You loved him, didn't you?" Jamie looked back up at the question. Clem had forgotten her cereal. She was staring at Jamie. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Her brow was furrowed and her smile had slipped. She looked far too serious for this early in the morning.

"I think I did." Though I hadn't yet told him, she added to herself. "Yes."

"Good."

And suddenly the moment was over. The girl had said what she wanted, asked what she needed to, gotten a suitable answer, and returned to her cereal, happily crunching away. It took Jamie another ten minutes to gather her wits.

If Jackson was right. If Mitch lived. She would find him. She would bring him home. Clem deserved it. They would be a family. A real one. It was the very least Jamie could do. Clem's words echoed in her mind. She had called her mom.


	11. Chapter 11

Jackson considered removing his shirt. He was beyond uncomfortable. And the most annoying part was he couldn't figure out why it was so unbearably hot. This was Africa. He was used to the heat. This was just plain miserable.

Still squatting at the lake's edge, he stared out across the dried bed. Steam was rising, curling into the air, where droplets of water fell from the ceiling of the cavern. He ran his hand along the silt of the lake bed. It was crusty and dusty. Dusty, he expected. The thin layer of crust though, that was unexpected. He rubbed his fingers together. Some kind of white powder coated them. It almost felt like salt, but smoother. He sniffed the powder. Lifting an eyebrow, he tilted his head. Well, that explained the scent of sulphur. Still didn't help him with what, exactly, it was.

It had to be a mineral of some sort. The matrix was too fine for something biologic. He looked up to study the surrounding the cavern's rock makeup. Too bad he was a biologist. In all honesty, he had no idea what he was looking at. Rocks were rocks. Hunching his shoulders, he gathered as much of the crust as he could and wrapped it in a scrap of fabric from an old bandana. Not the most sterile, but it would do. He stuffed the sample in his pocket.

Now, to get out of here. He studied the cavern. There were at least three connected passages across the way. One led off to the left, one to the right, and one definitely seemed to curve back around the cavern, behind where he was standing. He decided to avoid that one unless it became the only choice. He doubted that one led anywhere worthwhile. Crossing the lake bed, he peered down the right passage. It was darker than the cavern - lit as it had been by the sliver of light from the overhang he'd crawled in through - but looked uninhabited. Unused. He couldn't smell anything that remotely seemed animalistic. However, the scent of sulphur was still present way over here. Jackson glanced at the lake bed. The same crust. It appeared to be spread throughout the system.

Shrugging, he wandered over to the left passage. The odor of animal was unmistakable. He huffed and snorted. Strong musk. It almost hurt his eyes to stand close to the opening. He passed under the arched entrance. It was a better choice than the right. Either he was headed out, following a path overused by the creatures as they came and went or he was headed in deeper, toward a nursery. He was guessing it was an exit. Jackson hoped he was correct.

He blinked rapidly as the musky scent grew stronger. It stung painfully in his lungs. He breathed through his mouth, but it was no better. The lake bed he walked through wound along his path. He studied the shoreline. It was graded, quite steeply. If the water hadn't disappeared, the hybrids would have had to wade through the water to move about this passage.

The repeated switchbacks messed with him. He had no idea how far he'd walked or in what direction. The only thing he knew was the smell was getting stronger. There was also a sound, a growling or purring, perhaps a roaring, getting progressively louder the more steps he took. He struggled to make out individual noises, as if the hybrids had returned and were waiting around the next corner for him, but the sounds didn't change, didn't separate, instead they were insistent in tone. He knew of no animal that behavior fit. However, he did recognize the noise as commonplace on the savannah. It was eerily similar to the hum of an active hive of African bees.

He'd noticed some troubling behavior that first afternoon when he watched the hybrids feast on the pride of lionesses and had noted its similarity to bees, but since then he had forgotten. As the hum registered in his head, he suddenly remembered what had bothered him so much.

The hybrids had circled their kills, bowing and dancing almost solicitously toward the dead lionesses. They flitted from one kill to another, ignoring the two lionesses who had remained stunned, but not dead. They had whipped forward, then back, then side to side rapidly before rubbing noses, shoulders, and hips with one another. It was odd. At the time, and again now, he remembered the description his school teacher had taught him about bees dancing to communicate where a good source of food was in elementary school.

Tripping, Jackson squinted at his feet. The light had dimmed dramatically. It was now almost completely black. He'd run into the side of the lake bed. The shoreline was now up to his knees. Considering how tall the hybrids were, they would have had to swim through this part of the cave system. The sides of the passage were smooth, arching up and over his head. During the rainy season - except now - this tunnel was probably flooded.

He kept walking. The sound was unbearable. His clamped his hands over his ears. Sight was non-existent. Smell was gone, overwhelmed by the odor of the hybrid musk. Hearing was impossible. All he had left was touch. He moved slowly forward, one foot in front of another. When he hit the wall or bank, he turned and kept going.

The brightness of the exit looming in front of him made him curse. The last switchback had turned over on itself so quickly, he hadn't noticed the change in his vision, the lightening of his surroundings. He pulled up short, stopping. Opening before him, he saw a massive cavern at least triple the size of the first one. A humongous lake had once filled it. It, too, was now dried up. He stood on one side, his shoulders even with the bank's edge. And above him, a sinkhole. A sinkhole which now let in the full glory of the African afternoon sun. The white stalactites and stalagmites glistened in the brilliance. The same crust he'd discovered earlier coated this lake bed as well, adding to the glimmer. His eyes watered. Everything glowed.

Including the mass of wriggling cubs and nursing mothers. Each little family was cocooned in their own nest of dirt and debris, obviously dug out with love and care. The hum of activity rose higher, louder at his intrusion. Mothers rocked up onto their haunches. The cubs squirmed around, their feeding interrupted, and glared at him. Malicious. Hungry.

He felt the sudden urge to wave and say hello, but managed to hold back. This was definitely not good. He'd found the exit, but had also found the nursery. Well, damn!

And it seemed his odd observations were correct after all. He was looking at the spitting image of a ground hive turned flat sideways. Filled with hyena-like hybrids. Double shit!

Just once, he would love to be proven wrong. Just once. Was it really too much to ask? Cringing, he reconsidered this final request. He'd thought his father was dead. He'd been proven wrong there and then his father had gone and sterilized the world. Perhaps being right was better. Maybe he'd live through today and find out.

A few of the cubs placed their paws on the edge of their nest and began climbing out. They kept low, crouched on their surprisingly muscular limbs - for creatures so young- readying to pounce. He looked across the lake. They were everywhere. And they were thinking and moving as one.

He couldn't stop the panicked laugh that ripped from his chest.

Why the hell would anyone want a mammal as socially advanced and territorial as the hyena showcasing the hive-like efficiency of a bee hive? It was insane. Jackson stared at the closest of the stalking youngsters. Not just insane, deadly. He faced the perfect killing machine.


	12. Chapter 12

He eyed the approaching the cubs. Their mothers remained poised, calm, waiting in their nests, approving of their young taking the offensive. It was unnerving and Jackson felt the urge to just give up and weep. Though he wasn't quite sure this was what Mitch had had in mind when he'd first tossed the idea of a hive-like mind in the lions at that first meeting, when they'd begrudgingly shared their scientific notes and observations, he was more than sure this is what would have eventually happened if they hadn't found a cure for the animals.

The memory of that meeting sparked another - Chloe scared and bloodied begging for his help - then another memory - the lioness that had been left behind. Why had she been abandoned to survive while the other one was taken away and probably feasted on here, by these youngsters? If he could only figure out the answer, he might have a chance to survive. He doubted these cubs would just poison him first, then drag him to safety. That would be ludicrous.

Jackson swept his gaze over the cubs again. Their paws left radiating cracks in the layer of crystalline dust on the lake bed as they stalked closer. The dust was thicker here, forming a whitish crust. He noted the build-up, despite the circumstances, unable to turn off his scientific mind. It was an interesting development.

The closest young hybrid reached within a foot of his leg, crouching low to the ground and stretching its neck forward to sniff his pant. Its nose wrinkled in the effort. Jackson froze, watching. A string of drool leaked from the corner of the creature's mouth. Its eyes narrowed, squinting as it eased another front foot a half-step even closer. Its lips quivered, almost a grimace. One fang stuck, caught in his lip, reminding him of the danger he faced. It glistened white, sharp.

Another approached his other side. Mimicking the first, it too stayed low, sniffing him. One by one, another dozen slunk closer, circling him, all breathing in his odor. All motionless.

Jackson wasn't above praying. Not this time. He only hoped his mother and Chloe were listening and would speak up on his behalf. He needed to save Mitch. Then, he would go willingly. He had promised Jamie as much. And Jackson never broke his promises.

* * *

Mitch slammed his fist down on the lab counter. The rack of vials shook and clattered. He'd run every test he could think of and still, nothing made sense. He'd read through Dr. Oz's journal a hundred times and it didn't make any more sense than it had the first time. He was right the first time, Jackson's dad was a crackpot lunatic. Everything he did was insane. Dosing his son. Creating hybrids. Playing God.

Picking up the readouts of the latest test, then crossing over to the computer, he glanced back and forth between the two results. One was his. One was the exact same test performed by Dr. Oz over a year ago. It was a simple urinalysis.

They didn't match.

Which meant one of two things. Either Dr. Oz was lying on his results or the actual test - because Mitch knew for a fact that he wasn't doing anything wrong on his end - or the hybrids were evolving and mutating. Neither choice was good. If Dr. Oz had lied then Mitch couldn't believe any of the test results, or really anything recorded on the great and powerful doctor's computer and journal, and would have to start from scratch. Without a single real creature to test. All he received were collected samples to his request. And if the hybrids were mutating, then the world was screwed again.

It meant his cure had only "kinda" worked. It had fixed the normal animals. It had fixed the triple-helixed animals. It had not done anything to affect the hybrids. If they were still mutating, then the cure hadn't worked for them. They were immune. Which begged the question why. He wanted to blame the prehistoric nature of the hybrid - that Hyaenodon - but it had worked on the saber-tooth cats. Unless the Shepherds had lied to him. He shook his head. He didn't want to consider that. Dr. Oz lying, he could work with. Everyone lying? It was a Pandora's box he was too terrified to contemplate. Mitch shoved the niggling fear back into the depths of his mind. That dark place he attempted to avoid. Where the nightmares thrived. Where hope was a tease.

He collapsed into a chair, letting it roll backward until it banged into the side of his desk halfway across the lab. Crinkling the results in his fist, he tossed them over his head to join the rest of the readouts scattered across the floor, nowhere near the trashcan.

Closing his eyes, rubbing a thumb over each lid under the lens of his glasses, he dropped a hand to scratch at his scraggly beard. He leaned his head back and sighed. His stomach rumbled in hunger, but he didn't care. He rarely ate much anymore. He preferred to drink his daily calories if only they'd let him. A shot of vodka would do him wonders. Scoffing, he reconsidered. No vodka. There were too many memories there he didn't want to think about.

So many questions. So few answers. He focused on the simplest.

The urinalysis was consistent. Every test he ran showed the same composition. Though watered down as every animals' was, especially as a land mammal, it was oddly thick with a higher than average concentration of a salt-based matrix. Epsom salt, or magnesium sulfate, to be specific. The dried sample in the Petrie dish mocked him across the room. He couldn't think of a single animal in existence which shared the trait. However, it wasn't too bizarre to imagine the occurrence. Magnesium was found throughout the body as a cofactor in more than a hundred enzymes. It aided protein synthesis, the function of muscles and nerves, and in the control of blood glucose and pressure. And sulphur was the third most abundant mineral in the body. It too was found almost everywhere in the body.

Thus, in theory, the chemical reaction of the two should and would occur periodically if, and this was a big if, the two were present in appropriate ratios in the same place in the body in a solution conducive to them bonding. They already worked together alongside other chemicals in the formation of numerous enzymes utilized by the body.

Mitch laughed out loud, his voice harsh in the emptiness that had become his life.

Could it really be that simple? Were the two chemicals dissolving and bonding in the water of the bladder? It could happen. Magnesium sulfate was an ionic compound.

He frowned. Oh, shit. If that was the case, then that meant the hybrid's urine would conduct electricity. Mitch was pretty sure that was a very bad thing. Electricity created heat. And heat, especially high heat, would dehydrate an already dried salty matrix. Leaping to his feet, Mitch stalked across the lab and began typing into his own journal.

"Anhydrous magnesium sulfate? Desiccant?" He wasn't sure why this would matter or how it would help him get the hybrids back under control, but it was something. More than he had otherwise come up with in the handful of months he'd been here. Perhaps he could use electricity to dry out the animals from the inside. Somehow electrocuting them through their bladders.

He continued, recording the theory he had pierced together. Questions abounded. As he typed, one more question came to mind. The facts he typed stared back at him, the conflicting the results, the chemicals, the salt.. The previous fear returned, Pandora's box's lid torn free and shredded.

What if Dr. Oz had created the hybrid for one reason and the Shepherds had used it for another? Maybe, just maybe, the mutations were planned.


	13. Chapter 13

Clem was reading in her room. Jamie could hear the irregular thumping of the yellow lab's tail whenever Clem scratched his favorite spot between his ears. She smiled at the image in her mind.

The morning's conversation still filled her heart with joy. And a great deal of sadness. She missed Mitch. It was getting so bad, she was beginning to imagine his voice in the hum of the air conditioner, his touch in the brush of her clothing on the small of her back and the curve of her elbow. She kept playing over and over that last moment they were together and happy in her head. Every time she closed her eyes. Sighing, she leaned her head back on the couch. Just one more time.

They had separated from the group. He carried the release trigger in his hand, fiddling with it. She glanced from it to him, to the sand beneath her feet. She felt scared, excited. The air around them crackled with an electric charge. She really couldn't explain it. She seemed lighter, the day brighter, the future happier.

"Hey, you ever been to Maine?"

The question surprised her. She swallowed over the swelling of emotion that rose like bile in her throat. Surely, he wasn't asking her out? To a state? Not after how she'd treated him? Looking up at him quickly, she answered before she could doubt herself or him.

"No."

He tossed the trigger away, a small smile on his lips, but fear in his eyes when he met hers.

"Would you like to go to Maine with me?"

The wind off the shore picked up right then and he paused, turning into it, just for a moment, his wild scruffy hair blowing back. His face lit - literally lit up - with a grin. The happiest she had ever seen him. His joy was infectious. She ached to grin back. But then it passed. He sobered. She read the truth in his face. He was scared she would turn him down. Letting it go, moving on, though never forgetting it, she took another step and he fell back into stride beside her.

He bumped into her slightly as they continued walking along the beach. Not quite a kiss on a plane, but once again, she reacted before thinking. Her knuckles stroked the back of his hand. He looked sideways at her, his hand reaching for hers, his fingers closing over hers, holding onto her. She kept her eyes on the sand. She was afraid she would laugh. Or cry. Perhaps he wasn't the only one a little scared.

Ever since they'd been left behind in Washington to fend for themselves and try to save the world, she'd felt her heart melting toward the anger she'd been holding onto. They had bonded once again over their hair-brained idea to steal the clean DNA. It hadn't been Mitch's fault she'd been left in New Brunswick. It wasn't his fault, she'd had to make so many difficult decisions afterwards. And it wasn't his fault she'd been so torn up inside she'd lashed out at him repeatedly. He was a good guy. If she was honest, he was probably the best one she'd ever met. He stopped then, pulling her around to face him. He held onto her hand. She held onto his. "There's some… there is someone there I would like you to meet." His features were serious, almost sad. She could guess the reason.

He stopped then, pulling her around to face him. He held onto her hand. She held onto his. "There's some… there is someone there I would like you to meet." His features were serious, almost sad. She could guess the reason.

"Clem?" She met his eyes as she asked. Was he implying what she thought he was? Not just a date to a state, but a family outing with his estranged daughter. He nodded, seemingly reading her mind. Allowing her the choice. Giving her the chance. She could back out, she could turn him down. Shaking those thoughts away, instead, she seized the moment. She went with her gut. "Well, yeah. Yeah. I would love that."

"Good." He leaned toward her conspiratorially, adding, "then can we get out of here?"

Jamie had laughed, wanting desperately to pull him down and kiss him. She had hesitated. It hadn't been the right time. Too many people, too public.

And then the world had crumbled down and collapsed around them. Everything had fallen apart. She wiped at the tear that coursed down her cheek. She really needed to stop crying all the time. Pushing herself from the couch, she walked down the hall to the girl's room, peeked inside at her, just checking, then moved across the hall and into the bathroom they shared.

A cold shower. She needed to clear her mind.

The water stung her skin as she stepped under the spray. It was uncomfortable, painful, but she didn't adjust the knob. She deserved this, needed it even. She just stood there, the waterfall covering her head, plastering her hair to her scalp, washing her tears down her cheeks. And she let go. She gave up trying to move on, trying to be strong. In here, she was just plain Jamie. Jamie, when her mom had gotten sick. Jamie, when her father had died. Jamie, all alone.

The years of grief flowed free, sluicing down her body with the flow of the water, easing her heartbreak. After five minutes, with her skin and nerves as numb as her emotions, she did feel better. She felt clean, fresh. She was able to think.

Turning her back on the water, she stared at the tile wall.

The flash drives!

She still had them tucked away somewhere. It had been six months since she'd last seen them. She and Jackson had looked through them on the plane. At the time, there hadn't been anything on them worthwhile. Or so they thought. She suddenly remembered one folder, though. Dozens of security camera footage had been stored within it, each video dated. Every video was at least a year old. They hadn't bothered opening even one of them, looking for scientific information and documents, not security footage.

However, she recalled one of the thumbnail images. It was a helicopter sitting on the tarmac. The side of it decorated with a logo. A logo she had seen last night on the laptop.

If the lost pilot had been a regular to the island, a way in or out for people and supplies, someone who might have been privy to some of what was going on there, what were the chances his disappearance and Mitch's were related? She didn't believe in coincidences. It was the journalist in her. And it had served her well in the past. Trusting it again, she swirled the shower knob off and climbed out of the tub.

She needed to find those flash drives.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** _I will be finishing Part One soon, then going back and editing all of the Part One chapters. I've reviewed a few chapters and noted some typos as well as at least one continuity issue. Sorry about those. I will fix what I can and begin on Part Two shortly. Thank you to everyone who has posted a review. I love reading them and appreciate the support as I figure out where exactly this story is taking me..._

The bright streak of light crisscrossing the sky sent the interior of the cavern into stark relief. For one brief moment, that which was light became dark, that which was dark became light. The cubs, in complete synchrony, looked skyward. The den of mothers did the same. The boom of the thunder closely followed, ear-splitting in its intensity, the sound echoing as it did back and forth in the enclosed cavern. He saw a sea of white-rimmed pupils. Panic. The sudden darkening of the sky had gone unnoticed by them all. Fast moving clouds roiled above, a final storm to end the rainy season. Then, would come the summer heat storms. Africa was the lightning capital of the world.

Jackson didn't move. He was unsure as to why the hybrids seemed so scared, storms were a common occurrence throughout the world. In fact, there had been one almost every night this month. Here. Sometimes more than one. If they were so frightened, why did they stay instead of moving on, going somewhere else? Why set up what appeared to be a fully functioning nursery in a place they so obviously feared?

When they reacted, he was no less startled by them than by the flash of lightning. At once, he was forgotten. Old news. Replaced by a greater threat. The cubs dashed off back to their mothers' sides. The females gathered their cubs, shoving them with their snouts below their milk-heavy teats. The young collected, the mothers began shepherding them past him, back up the underground lake bed from whence he'd come. Back where it was safe. Where the lightning could not touch them.

He watched them stream by, a river of teeth, fur, and spikes. Turning in place, he counted them as they disappeared back up the dark passage. Almost a hundred of the creatures and not a single male. At least, not an adult male. He was guessing at the cubs' genders. Thinking back, he hadn't seen a male in the hunting group either.

Where were all the males?

Just another question in a long stream of unexplained phenomenon.

Jackson desperately needed to get back to the safari camp. Not least of all, to write down everything he'd seen, noticed, figured out, etc. so that he could report back to Jamie with whatever good news there was. She had to be nervous. He'd set out to find the hybrids over a week ago and hadn't been heard from since. Considering the escalating hybrid attacks she reported to him from California and his own reports to her, the fear of his demise, especially after delivering the hope of Mitch's survival would hurt her fragile psyche.

And what was it Chloe had last told him? His superpower was making people feel safe. Feel like everything was going to turn out okay after all. He snorted to himself. If that was his superpower then he'd failed her miserably. And his mother. He wasn't about to fail another woman close to him. Jamie was the closest he'd ever come to having a sister.

Above him, the storm picked up. The winds began to howl, the tall, dead grass edging the sinkhole rippled and thrashed, whipping the dirt. The lightning lit the sky, striking the earth. He felt a handful of tremors in his gut. Felt the buzz of an electric tingle. The thunder deafened him.

Crossing the ground hive of nests, he stooped to examine one directly beneath the open sky. A fat droplet splashed across his nape. Followed by a few more. He shivered. It was colder out here in the open, the warmth of the cavern passed. His sweat-soaked body was buffeted by the stormy air, suddenly chilling him. He was surprised to see the nest clear of the white powder. It had been scraped away, piled along the edges, leaving only dirt covered rock in its wake.

Placing a palm on the bare rock at the center of the nest, he hissed. It was boiling hot. Shaking his hand to ease the sting, he squinted. A quick burst of steam rose from the rock where a droplet had struck. Holding his other palm over the rock, he lowered it slowly, testing the temperature. A foot above the ground, the heat became noticeable. Another six inches and it was uncomfortable. No wonder he'd gotten burned.

He studied the surrounding nests, as well, noticing any differences. They seemed uniform, each drop falling disappearing as well into a puff of steam. Then, as the droplets of rain became a downpour, he decided it was time to go.

Jackson carefully climbed the closest rock wall to the open sinkhole, using the intermittent lightning to light his path as much as possible. A story above the floor of the cavern, he rested for a moment, hanging by an arm. He shifted his backpack around to his chest and dug out the length of rope he'd had the foresight to bring along. In a few seconds, he'd fashioned a simple grapple and hook. He swung it out wide a few times, gradually lengthening the rope until he was pretty sure he'd get a good enough grip on whatever remained non-slick-ass-mud up above. Using all his strength he flipped the hook and rope backward. It arched up through the hole and over the side. He barely heard the thud as it struck land, but it felt the pull of the rope in his hands. He tugged. Movement, then a pause. He tugged again. And again harder. The hook was set. Taking a deep breath, he released his hold on the rock wall and swung out into the cavern.

In a matter of minutes, a fresh sheen of sweat on his exposed skin from the exertion - he was shocked at the lack of pain in his injured wrist - he exited the cavern system and crouched low on the plain of the Serengeti. Looking around, he sighed audibly, heavily. Well, at least he had one question answered. He was along the western edge of the dried watering hole's depression. The hybrids had indeed caused the overnight evaporation. He still didn't know how.

Keeping low, crawling across the mud of the watering hole, he finally reached the copse of taller trees nearby. Protected from random smiting, he shouldered his backpack squarely, knocked as much mud as he could from his boots and knees, and set off back home.

He would reach it before full night fell. Quickly calculating the time change, he would have enough time to write out his observations before contacting Jamie and before Clem was due at the bus stop in the morning.


	15. Chapter 15

"Hey, Jackson," Jamie paused. She wasn't quite sure what to think about all he'd shared, but she was extremely happy he had survived and was still confident of Mitch's potential survival. Glancing down at the notes she had scrawled across the random assortment of papers in her lap, she continued. "Thanks. Thanks for everything."

She could almost hear the boyish grin in his words. "He's okay, Jamie. Mitch is fine. I know it. We'll find him and bring him home."

Nodding, she only sighed.

"How is Clem?" he asked, changing the subject. She smirked. He always seemed to know when she needed to talk about something else. Seemed to pick up on her moods better than most, never letting her wallow for too long in the vast sadness that was her life. His life, too, it had turned out. Perhaps that was why. They bonded over grief.

"She's good. Doing well in school. Hates math. Is ambivalent about the life sciences, though that might be more about the teacher she has instead of the subject. Loves writing." Jamie had just gotten the girl out the door right before Jackson had called. He had mentioned trying to catch her before Clem had left, but he'd gotten a little lost on his way back to camp. Something about dropping his compass in a dung pile. "She misses everyone. Asks daily about Dariela and if she's had the baby yet. I keep reminding her a baby takes nine months, which I'd like to think a school should be teaching, but since she's Mitch's daughter I'm hoping she forgot how to count to nine because she's so excited."

"Closest she's ever been to being a sister. I can understand. I wanted a little brother or sister for most of my life. Had to settle for Abe."

"Not quite 'little' huh?"

He laughed politely and she let the silence settle between them for a moment before continuing. In truth, she was not sure how he might take what else she wanted to say.

"She's decided to sign up for French next year. Says you had something to do with that." Jamie wasn't judging. She thought it was a nice gesture of him to suggest the language. A way to remember Chloe and her sacrifice. A sacrifice that had helped to save the girl's life.

"I may have." His voice softened with the words and he quieted again. She understood. All too well. The every day things that reminded you over and over of a loss.

A minute passed, then another. She wasn't sure what to say. "So…" she finally settled on. A poor choice, but it was better than nothing. "What's next for you?"

It took him a moment to answer and Jamie shook her head. His misery was as palpable as hers. As close to the surface. They could pretend all they wanted, could fake a normal life, but deep down they both had died inside.

"I'm going to send the dust I collected to the university. I have a friend there who might be able to help identify it. As soon I know anything, I'll call."

"You could just stop by." It had been a few months since Jackson had last visited and suddenly, she really wanted to see him again. Besides, he was the closest Clem had to a father figure these days and though she hadn't mentioned it, her conversation with Jamie yesterday morning meant the girl was definitely focused on family at the moment. It would be good for them all to spend a little time together. Having lost those closest to them during the animal apocalypse, they were each other's strength in the days afterward.

He laughed at her suggestion. His tone was light, but she sensed something more, something deeper underneath. "Yeah, I'll hop on over after breakfast."

"You better." She ignored her worry, shoving it to the far corners of her mind. Now was not the time to push.

"What are you going to do with the information we've gathered?" There it was again. He steered their conversation off-course - or rather back on-course.

"I will have to read back through all your observations. See what I can dredge up on the Internet. See if anything pops up that might link back to the Shepherds. I did get a semi-hit on a search for saber-tooth cat sightings the other day. Found a possible link between Pangaea and an Argentinian rental facility. Oh, and I finally found a use for those flash drives." She scoffed. Jackson had been with her when they'd hoped there was something incriminating on them. When they had left Mitch behind and sat, safe, on the plane just waiting for him.

"Tell me."

"The video files were security feeds. I was planning to look through them this afternoon. I'll let you know what I discover. I think one, in particular, might be of use. It's a lead, I'm just not quite sure where it will lead."

"You do that, Jamie." He hesitated. "It's getting late here. I'll be in touch."

She echoed his promise with one of her own, adding, "Be safe."

"You, too."

Ending the call, she dropped her cell phone to the coffee table and sat back, her bare feet on the edge of the table, picking up and organizing her notes into some semblance of an order. Retrieving the few pages of her own she'd jotted down as he'd spoken, adding her own findings alongside his observations, she began to read.

* * *

Jamie collected the papers, bouncing them on her thighs to straighten them, and groaned. She couldn't see the link, the connection between all these random notes, but she knew it was there. So many strange behaviors. Secret organizations acting beyond government control. Missing people. Reminded her of her Reiden Global days. She placed the papers aside and stood, stretching her spine. She grabbed her laptop, a bag of chips from the cabinet, and a glass of water, moving to her bedroom. She needed a change of scenery.

An hour later, she'd gone through half the video files of the security feed. They were a hodge-podge of locations throughout the island and facility, all about five minutes long, most focused on the moving of a single crate. Writing on the sides was too faded and small to be read with the rather average quality of the video feeds, but with the caution the scientists and movers treated the crate, she had a sinking feeling there was a very dangerous animal inside. At least twice, she'd seen the grainy images of persons nearby the crate leap and back away from it suddenly.

She hoped she was wrong as to which animal. The final file had been of the crate loaded onto a plane, the logo a familiar one. That lead, she was happy to note, had kinda paid off. Her instincts were still good.

Without any more files on this flash drive, she'd gone through the other drives. They, too, contained video files, but all were dated well before the one she'd started with. All the answers she needed, prayed to find, had to come from somewhere else. Since the files were obviously digital, there had to be a trace of them left behind somewhere out in the world. A trace someone deceitful, illegally connected, intelligent, and motivated could discover. Either him or an old connection. Luckily, she had an idea about who to contact and where, exactly, he should begin looking.

She shoved her laptop off her lap and walked back into the living room. She picked up her cell phone and placed a call. Tapping her foot, she waited.

"Hi, Edward," she began upon hearing the familiar man's voice answer. "It's Jamie. I need you to be Logan with me again. You in?"

The curse on the other end made her grin.


End file.
